Today when we got home from grandma’s/ school we played pretend. Cohen had just eaten a popsicle in his high chair, and Sophie had crawled under it when he was eating. Cohen thought this was funny, so he crawled under too and the four legs of the high chair quickly became the four walls of Cohen’s new “house”. My house was was the loveseat; what began by “knocking on each other’s doors” and asking for a cup of sugar evovled into a daily routine of getting into our “cars” (the edges of the coffee table) and driving to our work at the fire station. We successfully put out fires that popped up around our living room to return home and eat dinner and go to bed. The part of the game that kept making Cohen crack up was our “crazy neighbor lady” (Sophia) who was eating paper and barging into our houses without knocking.

Later, Cohen and I were sitting on the front stoop counting cars. Cohen all of a sudden said “shoot, I forgot my phone at GaGa’s.” — Is he a teenager already?? When we came inside, we had just counted car #8. Cohen was feeling contrary, so when I said “eight” Cohen said, “No 8– that 44!” He continued his teenager phase in the kitchen as he proceeded to take out all of our pots and pans as Jacob was cooking dinner. Jacob asked what he was doing. Cohen’s response: “uhhh, nothing.” Hopefully he never gets any better at lying.

Final note: Sophie claps her hands on command. We naturally had to have a family clapping and singing party at dinner.